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Why Transformers: Age of Extinction May Not Be So BadBy Darrin Jones / April 16

Proud ruiner of childhood icons and explosion fetishist auteur, Michael Bay, is at it again with another sequel to the increasingly critically panned Transformers franchise. And as someone that has seen all the Transformer films I can honestly say that Transformers #4, Age of Extinction doesn’t look all that bad. So here’s why I think the next Transformers film might just be a rare success in the series.

1.No Shia LaBeouf or Megan Fox

Yes, we are finally getting rid of that high-pitched squealing hard-to-work-with drama queen that’s blighted the Transformer movies until now; I wasn’t too fond of Megan Fox either. Just removing this insufferable pair would’ve been a vast improvement so you can guess how excited I was to find out that Mark Wahlberg would be our new human element in this series about massive fighting robots. I think Wahlberg is an incredibly likable actor and will give the movie some much needed sincerity and humor.

2. The Story Is Finally Centered Around Optimus Prime

The story picks up some years after the events of the third movie meaning that pretty much everyone knows about Transformers and either hate or fear them. And from the trailer, we get hints that that Optimus Prime has seen so much battle damage that he’s non-functional if not the robotic equivalent of comatose until he’s fixed up by Mark Wahlberg’s character. Compound this with the idea that the government are now actively wiping out all Transformers, including Autobots, and you’ve got the making of a great hero comeback story that’s actually based on fan favorite, Optimus Prime. For whatever reason, the series has never let Prime take main stage so this is a welcomed change.

3. It Introduces a New Villain

Let’s face it, the rivalry between Prime and previous big bad, Megatron, was growing stale. His plots were boring, he was getting boring. But here we mix it up a little with a Transformer that is neither Decepticon or Autobot; the bounty hunter Lockdown. That’s right, we got a giant robot bounty hunter trying to capture the leader of the Autobot resistance and their showdown is happening on Earth. This is the kind of Han Solo/Boba Fett action we didn’t even get to see in the Star Wars series!

4. It Doesn’t Wank Off the Military

It happened in every single Transformer movie so far. The big robot-on-robot fight scene happens but all the Autobots are pushed into the background so that the military can roll in to show off their big boomy guns. Now don’t get me wrong, it makes sense that there’d be some military presence when mechanical alien lifeforms are having a fistfight in the middle of a populated city. It’s just a shame that the Autobots are hardly ever given more then a few minutes of screen time during these scenes when it’s THEIR war that’s going on. Fortunately, that doesn’t look like the case here.